EC junks Congress allegations on MP electoral roll duplication

The EC said that it is carrying out a second summary revision of the electoral roll of the state ahead of assembly elections to ensure it is error free.

The Election Commission of India has junked the Congress allegations of fake voters on the Madhya Pradesh electoral roll, terming them as “invalid” and unsubstantiated.

The EC has written to the Congress on 16
th July on the subject saying that “in view of the reports of the extensive door-to-door field verifications…your allegations of large scare duplicate, repeat, invalid and false etc electors in the electoral roll are not substantiated”.

The Congress had alleged large scale irregularities in the MP electoral roll in a complaint dated 3
rd June, 2018.

Following the Congress complaint, the EC had sent teams of officials to four assembly constituencies of Narela, Bhojpur, Hoshangabad and seoni-Malwa to enquire into the allegations made.

The Chief Electoral Officer of MP in his report has said that the allegations pertaining to the ‘abnormal increase of electors’ against population- from 3,68,48,021 in 2008 to 4,60,29,289 in 2013 and 4,97,97,657 as on 02/07/2018 (An increase of 8.1%) is found to be progressive on annual basis and “is reasonable” considering EC efforts to enrol more and more first time voters and left out voters.

The EC teams have also conducted physical door to door verification to check on allegations of intra-assembly constituency duplication in the electoral roll and found that only 9,664 were found in repeated entry category and appropriate action is being taken in the case. In case of allegations of inter- assembly constituency duplication in 101 ACs, the EC teams found 8,728 repeated entry acses.

The EC has also found little merit in the Congress allegation on 60,00,000 duplicate entries saying that the complaint is based on limited parameters of common name, relation and gender without parameters of age and photo.

The EC said that it is carrying out a second summary revision of the electoral roll of the state ahead of assembly elections to ensure it is error free. It, however, also said it cannot intervene on the issue of reinstatement of officials who may have erred during their polling duties in Kolaras and Mungaoli by polls as demanded by the Congress.

Meanwhile, the EC today also ruled that the 21 Aam Aadmi Party MLAs’ cannot cross examine the petitioner and the Delhi government functionaries in the Office of Profit case and has fixed 27
th July for final arguments in the case. The Delhi High Court had earlier quashed an EC order disqualifying the MLAs and asked the EC to grant the MLAs personal hearing.